Quotes About Learning

vocabulary is actually more important than grammar.

If you want to know the one thing that will allow you to grow faster than anything else, it is the belief that you may be wrong about absolutely everything you believe. When you can question your beliefs at every possible turn, your opportunities for growth expand exponentially.

Kids who don't eavesdrop on adult conversations are doomed to a childhood of ignorance.

Don't let the covers fool you. Books, like lives, are wiggling, evolving, living things. They're not bound by pages or authors or schools of thought. They're not born when they're printed; in fact, they only start to live once they're read. So first of all, we thank you, reader. You dignify this work we do, and we're sincerely grateful for your time and attention.

Shouldn't schools be the place where students interact with interesting books? Shouldn't the faculty have an ongoing laser-like commitment to put good books in our students' hands? Shouldn't this be a front-burner issue at all times?

I also talk a lot in Deeper Reading about the importance that confusion plays. When my students come to me, they think confusion is bad. They are wrong. Confusion is the place where learning occurs.

I am not simply teaching the reading; I am teaching the reader.

To become a lifelong reader, one has to do a lot of varied and interesting reading.

What do teachers and curriculum directors mean by 'value' reading? A look at the practice of most schools suggests that when a school 'values' reading what it really means is that the school intensely focuses on raising state-mandated reading test scores- the kind of reading our students will rarely, if ever, do in adulthood.

Valuing reading" is often a euphemism for preparing students to pass mandated multiple-choice exams, and in dragging students down this path, schools are largely contributing to the development of readicide.

Instead, I designed the unit with one question in mind: What is in the best interest of my students?

Clearly, if we want students to perform well on standardized reading tests, our top priority should not be on narrowing students into a test-prep curriculum; our focus should be on providing our students with the widest reading experiences possible.

It is modeling revision—taking a rough draft and moving it to a better place—that is critical if our students are to sharpen their writing skills.

read books through the lens of life preparation.

I am not against teaching students how to take a test. Indeed, we want all of our students to have test-taking knowledge. However, the emphasis of teaching reading through the lens of preparing students for state-mandated tests has become so completely unbalanced that it is drowning any chance our adolescents have of developing into lifelong readers.

How do we get students to understand that the hard work and frustration that comes with learning how to write well is worth it? How do we get students to see the importance writing can play in their adult lives? How do we change the fact that seven out of ten students are leaving high school without adequate writing skills?

What does it matter if teachers sprint through all the standards if at the end of the year their students still cannot write well?

ELA teachers to cut back on the reading of literature and poetry. This trend of moving students away from literary reading is antithetical to good ELA instruction. Kids need more literary reading, not less.

I always loved the idea of learning martial arts, but it wasn't until I was in my 20s that I really started doing it and taking up karate.

You can't tell a horse's gait till she's broke.

Experience is another word for mistakes.

The moments of the class must belong to the student—not the students, but to the very undivided student. You don't teach a class. You teach a student.

The best teaching is often both an intellectual creation and a performing art.

Simply put, the best teachers believe that learning involves both personal and intellectual development and that neither the ability to think nor the qualities of being a mature human are immutable. People can change, and those changes--not just the accumulation of information--represent true learning.